Reading Bill Makes Progress; Testing Doesn't

Gridlock eased long enough for President Clinton's reading
initiative to inch toward passage last week, but it kept a grip on his
national testing plan.

The House Education and the Workforce Committee passed a reading
bill that included much of what Mr. Clinton proposed earlier this year
and attracted conditional Democratic support. Meanwhile, Congress
extended the deadline for voting on the administration's national test
plan until Nov. 7, and a legislative impasse on testing and other
issues tied to annual appropriations bills continued. (See related
story, p. 20.)

"I want to work with the president on education, but we aren't here
to rubber-stamp poor ideas," Rep. Bill Goodling, R-Pa., the education
panel's chairman, said in announcing that his committee would consider
the literacy bill he had held up two weeks earlier to protest the
testing plan.1

Mr. Goodling's decision came after President Clinton and his team
highlighted the stalled reading bill in a national radio address on
Oct. 18 and at White House events last week featuring the testing and
reading initiatives.

"I'm concerned that the House is starting to get stuck in the usual
partisan rut and losing sight of what is really important in
education," Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley said at the White
House on Oct. 20, two days before Mr. Goodling's committee acted.

Later, Mr. Goodling said in an interview that he wanted his panel to
take up the reading legislation despite protests from many conservative
committee members that the federal government already runs other
literacy programs. He said he feared Mr. Clinton would get most of what
he wanted for his literacy plan from the Senate.

"My idea is that we should be a player," he said. "We're going to
get a program whether we are players or not."

Holding Firm

While Mr. Goodling yielded on the reading bill, he held firm in his
opposition to proposed voluntary national assessments for 4th graders
in reading and 8th graders in mathematics. He recruited 295 members to
support his amendment to bar the Department of Education from spending
money to develop the tests.

But appropriators, who are trying to write the annual spending bill
to which Mr. Goodling's amendment is attached, are pushing for a
compromise that the president will sign.

"Ultimately, we have to do this thing," Rep. John Edward Porter,
R-Ill., the chairman of the House-Senate conference committee trying to
settle the issue, said.

To allow more time for a deal, Congress last week passed and Mr.
Clinton signed a spending measure that keeps federal programs in the
Education Department and several other agencies funded through Nov. 7.
Appropriators are already behind schedule. Fiscal 1998 began Oct.
1.

The reading bill that Mr. Goodling's panel passed in a unanimous
voice vote differs from the president's proposal to train 1 million
volunteers, AmeriCorps workers, and college students to serve as
reading tutors. Mr. Goodling's bill would allow college students to
continue as tutors through the College Work-Study financial-aid
program, but it would not authorize trainers for volunteers or
AmeriCorps workers. 2

Literacy Legislation

Instead, it would distribute $260 million in fiscal 1999 for teacher
training. The money, which was earmarked for the president's literacy
effort, would flow to states, which would pass 95 percent of their
grants to school districts.

The plan also would allow schools in impoverished areas to use
federal funds for tutorial-assistance grants, a proposal Democrats
oppose. The money would be given to parents to pay tutors approved by
the school district. Although Democrats objected to the grants, they
decided to vote for the bill, HR 2614, in the hope of negotiating a
deal they could accept before the full House considers the measure.
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said the bill would be
debated this week.

"I am pleased that Chairman Goodling and the members of the
committee voted to pass ... a bipartisan bill that moves us one step
closer to helping many more children read well and independently by the
end of the 3rd grade," Mr. Riley said in a statement.

No Budging on Testing

While Mr. Goodling sensed it was time to move on the reading bill,
he and Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., who is leading the opposition to the
national tests in the Senate, decided to turn up the heat on the
Education Department.

They requested that the General Accounting Office audit the
department's spending to date on the national tests, review the
department's legal authority to create such tests, and investigate the
work done by test contractors hired by the department.

Mr. Ashcroft now has 35 senators committed to abandoning the
amendment adopted by the Senate that would allow the tests but put them
under the control of the National Assessment Governing Board, an
independent panel that already oversees the National Assessment of
Educational Progress.

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